“Lion King 3D” sounds like a Viewmaster version

I haven’t seen the 3D version of “Lion King” that’s currently bringing in some bucks at the box office. And I don’t have a 3D-television setup, so I won’t be watching it at home when the 3DBD version comes out on Tuesday. But in the words of my colleague Rene Guzman of the Geek Speak blog (who hasn’t seen it either), “seeing it in 3D would seem like the Viewmaster version.”

Rene is more accommodating to the 3D format than I am, but neither of us felt this was really necessary. However, the box office gives the lie to that statement, as it’s gathered in over $45 million in its 3D incarnation. It’s currently the number one hand-drawn animated film of all time, so that just adds to its standings. My concern is that it prolongs the life of what I see as a bad idea; the conversion of classic films to the 3D format. But more on that later.

This is another one of those classic films that scarcely needs a description, but here goes:

Young Simba (voice of Jonathan Taylor Thomas) has just been introduced to the Pride Land population as their future Lion King. This doesn’t sit well with Scar (Jeremy Irons), who has just seen his path to the throne evaporate. Mufasa (James Earl Jones), the current Lion King, allows his brother his discontent; which turns out to be a mistake.

Through an alliance with the mangy hyenas, Scar brings about the death of Mufasa and the exile of Simba, which leaves him free to take over the kingdom. Simba hooks up with meerkat Timon (Nathan Lane) and warthog Pumbaa (Ernie Sabella) in a lush jungle and grows to adulthood (now voiced by Matthew Broderick). But circumstances will be calling on him to return to take his rightful place as the King.

The BD extras include:

Four deleted scenes: Includes a song for Mufasa that thankfully got left out in the storyboarding stages.

Blooper reel: It looks like they just animated audio outtakes; there’s one of Mufasa doing test growls. Most tasteless one: Rafiki tripping on Pride Rock and flinging the young Simba off the cliff. Ugh. Next time, leave this kind of extra to the professionals at Pixar.

Pride of the Lion King: Retrospective featurette interviews directors Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff; producer Don Hahn; Broderick and Lane (who only met in passing while recording their voices, but went on to team up in the Broadway revival and subsequent reboot of Mel Brooks’ “The Producers”); various artists; composer Hans Zimmer; lyricist Tim Rice; producer Jeffrey Katzenberg; former Disney head Michael Eisner and more. Also discusses the success of “The Lion King” on Broadway.

The Lion King: A Memoir – Don Hahn: Featurette created at the time of release. Covers a lot of the same ground as “Pride” does, but in some different directions.

Sing Along Mode: Karaoke mode.

Interactive Blu-Ray Gallery: interactive photo gallery with pre-production art up to final artwork.

Disney Second Screen: PC or iPad app that synchronizes with the film. It basically takes the pop-up-commentary and puts it on a secondary device.

On conventional BD, the film looks as gorgeous as ever, and is a worthy upgrade for animation buffs. However, I think the set would have been better served to put the film and its new extras on a BD disc, and then the existing “Platinum Edition” extras on a conventional DVD (instead of a DVD version of the same film in the same case). As it is, they did what they did with the “Fantasia” BD release; they put the original disc extras online, available only through a BD-Live enabled player.

I suppose that the way to pay for these Special Editions is to do theatrical releases, and since the latest gimmick to get people in theater is 3D, that’s what studios do. Rumor has it that the next film to get the conversion to 3D is James Cameron’s mega-blockbuster “Titanic.” While the thought of a posing Kate Winslet is enticing, it’s not enough reason to do this. It’s shameless double-dipping.

I appreciate the BD releases that come out, as I see BD as a collector’s medium, and I am a film collector. But I wish the 3D format would go away. To me, it’s the same as the debate over colorizing old black-and-white movies was about 20 years ago. Colorization was a bad idea then and this is a bad idea now.